Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement

The Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA) is a nonprofit organization that recognizes the Internet’s potential to transform the learning process by making information accessible and engaging. The organization is dedicated to identifying unique challenges that prevent the Web from reaching its educational potential, and developing creative, innovative approaches and technologies to solve those problems.

Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach that is both innovative and bold, IDEA undertakes programs and projects designed to promote the interaction between people and information within the framework of technology. Our endeavors range from gathering and presenting useful information to the public; to building upon the body of research on the relationships between learning, information, and technology; to developing technological tools that break down the barriers between people and computers. Most often, they incorporate all three elements.

IDEA now released a white paper on Factors that improve online experiences and touch certain topics that you might want to dive into:
• Designers underestimate the thresholds for an effective site
• Easy access to complete information is key to visitor enjoyment
• Good visual design and up-to-date information are critical
• Visitors want information fast
• Visitors want a broad range of topics
• Designers are overly optimistic about visitors’ ability to maintain orientation
• Visitors still need handholding
• Visitors point to the lack of breadth and depth of site content as causing an “Information Gap.”

The focus is on the question; How do we find information? I could add maybe; what information do you rate as "valuable" or rather "plausible". Systems as Wikipedia kinda worked the trick but yet not always. That could add up to go in the direction of thinking; with which tools do we find the information, and who develops and controls these tools, and off course do you take for granted that the information they push as plausible is not edited by the once that are in charge... we are thinking Google mainly, yes. (and I'm referring to things as pageRank and such, that we assume are honest top refferals for valid information)